Eric Mangini said he’s used to being the young guy in the room, so it wasn’t a big adjustment for him when the New York Jets made him the NFL’s youngest head coach.

That’s not to say this is where he expected to be at age 35, especially since it wasn’t that many years ago that he was putting together newspaper clippings as a public relations intern with the Cleveland Browns.

“I have a big soft spot for the guys that are putting the clips together,” Mangini, whose Jets have a Sunday date against the Vikings at the Metrodome, said Wednesday. “We call them PHDs: poor, hungry and driven. Any PHD I definitely love to give opportunities to, and I think it’s important.”

It has worked out for Mangini, who went from a ball boy and PR intern in Cleveland to a Browns coaches assistant under Bill Belichick in 1995. He also has had assistant coaching gigs with Baltimore, the Jets and New England, where he spent five seasons as Belichick’s defensive backs coach from 2000-04 before moving up to defensive coordinator last season.

Mangini’s next move was back to the Jets, who signed him to a five-year contract two days before his 35th birthday and have gotten a good early return on their investment, with a surprising 7-6 record heading into Sunday’s game.

Not bad for a guy who didn’t see football in his future until he served a two-year stint as head coach/defensive coordinator of the Kew Colts in Australia from 1992-93.

“I had coached football in Australia for a couple of years while I was in college,” Mangini said. “Originally, I thought I was going to be an investment banker, never really thought about football. I fell in love with it through that experience, then when I came back to the States decided I wanted to try it as a career. I thought if I could get my foot in the door in the NFL, see what it was like, see what it was about, that would help me in terms of my education.”

Mangini learned his lessons well, but his disciplined style has been an adjustment for Jets players, who have two officials working every practice and know they will pay a price for every penalty they commit in a game.

“He’s very disciplined about not making mistakes,” wide receiver Laveranues Coles said. “He makes you run laps. If you get a penalty in the game, you’re after practice running.”

That attention to detail has paid off for the Jets – whose 59 penalties are third-fewest in the league behind only Denver and Pittsburgh (both 55) – even if it might have cost Mangini some popularity points in the locker room.

Asked if he was a good hire, Coles answered, “What I think really doesn’t matter.”

“What can you say?” the seven-year veteran added. “There’s nothing you can really do. It ain’t like you can walk in and rant and rave and then they’re going to get rid of him, the people upstairs. I think guys personally just have to come to work, try to work and try to fit in and do what he asks you to do. If he doesn’t feel you fit the system he’s trying to do, maybe he’s going to get rid of you anyway.”

Quarterback Brooks Bollinger, who came to the Vikings in an Aug. 31 trade from the Jets, said Mangini definitely was a change after four seasons under Herm Edwards.

“A lot of coaches have their own style and do things different ways,” Bollinger said. “Let’s just say his way is a little different than Herm’s was. There’s naturally a transition there that happened. He definitely, I think, commands the respect of all the players.”

Mangini said he thinks the players have bought into his system and that he has been happy with their effort from the offseason program through minicamps, training camp and deep into the season.

“What I’ve found is, if the players know that you’re putting them in a position to succeed and you’re doing everything you can to help them and the team be successful, they’re very open regardless of age,” he said.

The Jets have overachieved in the eyes of most NFL observers and face an uphill battle to make the playoffs after last week’s 31-13 home loss to Buffalo.

A game and a tiebreaker behind Cincinnati and Jacksonville in the race for one of two AFC wild-card spots, the Jets face a must-win situation Sunday, as do the Vikings. But Mangini said he’s not looking at it that way.

Things might look tough at the moment, but it beats putting together newspaper clips for a living, although he said today’s PR interns don’t know how good they have it.

“They’ve got it easy,” Mangini said. “I had to cut them out, straighten them, photocopy them and then we had a big leather book that you pasted them in. That was a little bit more challenging than logging on to ESPN.com.”

Don is a veteran NFL writer who has spent the past six years working as an editor on the sports desk. Before that, he covered the Vikings for four years and the Timberwolves for one. Before coming to the Pioneer Press in 2004, he covered the Los Angeles Rams for 10 years for the Orange County Register and spent three years as a senior editor at NFL Publishing.

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